JustinGuitar has an entire article about acoustic vs electrics. If you’ve never played and just want to learn how to play, learn this: get an acoustic. It’s harder to play because you need more finger strength, but you’ll be glad you did. Think of it like learning to drive. If you learn to drive a manual transmission, you can drive any kind of car! If you learn to drive an automatic transmission, you can only drive automatic transmissions, not manuals! Same applies to guitars. If you learn an acoustic, you can play either type of guitar.

Here’s another factor to consider: You can play an acoustic anywhere, but you can only play an electric with an amp (guitar speaker). Imagine this situation: You’re on a date. You’re staring out across the entire city with a beautiful girl sitting next to you on your car. The date hasn’t been going so well, and you know the perfect song to lighten up the situation. Unless you have a guitar-input jack inside your car, an electric guitar just won’t cut it. You need to bust out the perfect-for-pick-up-and-play acoustic guitar and strum your heart out. Just be careful; the beautiful girl might fall in love with you.

So yeah, learn the acoustic first.